Spinach genome sequencing

Spinach has an estimated genome size of 989 Mb. A sibling inbred spinach line, Sp75, was selected for the genome sequencing using
the whole genome shotgun approach. Five paired-end libraries and three mate-pair were constructed and sequenced, representing
168-fold coverage of the genome assembly. De novo assembly of these reads resulted in a draft spinach genome of ~870 Mb with an
N50 scaffold length of ~319.5 kb. In addition, BioNano consensus maps (~213×) were reconstructed and used to improve the spinach
genome assembly. Finally, the assembled genome size and the N50 length increased to 996 Mb and 919.2 kb, respectively. The
resulted genome sequences were further anchored to six linkage groups by an F2 spinach population.
A total of 25,495 protein-coding genes were predicted from the spinach genome.